Monday, November 13, 2017

Weinberg dissatisfied with quantum mechanics

Famous physicist Steven Weinberg gave a lecture on the shortcomings of quantum mechanics, and in the Q&A said this:

Well. Yeah, Einstein said let's resolve the issues by saying that there isn't any aether. Other people had pretty well come to that point of view, like Heavyside. Einstein was unquestionably the greatest physicist of the 20th century, and 1 or the 2 or 3 greatest of all time.

But, um. I don't think his break from the past is comparable to the break with the past represented by quantum mechanics, which is not the work of one person, unlike relativity, which is the work of one person.

It is funny how he just wants to say that quantum mechanics was more radical than relativity, but he cannot do it without over-the-top praise for Einstein.

If he knows about Heavyside and the aether, he certainly knows how special relativity theory was created by Lorentz, Poincare, and Minkowski.

Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.

His complaints about quantum mechanics are a little strange. He says it doesn't tell us what is really going on, because some electron properties are not determined until measured. The popular approaches are instrumentalist or realistt, and he finds them unsatisfactory. He also does not accept many-worlds or pilot waves, but admits that some new interpretation might resolve the problems.

He says the big problem is how probabilities get into QM, when all of the laws are deterministic.

When asked about quantum computers, he is noncommittal on whether they are possible.

It is funny to see him get all weird about quantum mechanics in his old age.